Welcome to the mess.

My friend Jessica just returned from Honduras.  Today I got a message from her on facebook, lamenting the questions she’s been asked by people—well-meaning Americans who love her dearly and want to communicate their interest and affection but have no idea how.  It made me laugh to read her examples, that sort of painful half-laugh that you snort out because if you don’t you might just cry.  I suppose it’s funny.  I mean, it is funny, really.  The sarcastic side of me wants to respond to comments like the one poor Jessica had to endure (“Enchiladas, tacos, burritos… all Mexican food is the same”) with a really snappy response, like, “Are you an idiot?  One, they’re all pretty distinct foods; two, Mexico and Honduras are NOT THE SAME PLACE!!!”  But that’s not very nice.  I know that.  So I don’t say things like that, at least not out loud and in public.  When people ask dumb questions about Romania, I bite my tongue and come up with something kind and affirmative to say to the well-meaning, middle-aged, white man who has never left the country, and if I’m feeling bold enough I’ll correct him gently, but I certainly don’t open up and even try to explain the ways my life was changed.  I dare not try to paint pictures with my words of the spiritual moments from my time abroad.  I stick to anecdotes that are funny and interesting, that paint Romanian culture in its best possible light, and that never dig too deep.  I might comment on its political culture and history and how I feel about communism, and if you’re well-informed, we might have a good conversation.  But few people are.  Actually, few people really care.  Which is maybe okay, because it’s not like I even have adequate words to describe what happened, anyway.

My least favorite question is the one I get most often: “How was… uh… (thinking frantically for the name of the country I was in, and coming up short)… Europe?”  (Sometimes, if I’m feeling especially generous, I’ll interject “Romania” before it gets too painful.  But not always.)  I’m from the Midwest and therefore almost eternally polite, so I usually smile and say, “Wonderful.  I loved it.”  And I mean that, I really do.  But that’s so inadequate.  I don’t know what else I can say, really, to explain to you what Romania means to me, and because of the lack of words, I find myself now, almost two weeks back, all-too-often simply resorting to those same anecdotes and brief explanations.  Wonderful.  Romania was wonderful.

But in reality, to explain to you how it was, you’d need to live 20 years in my life to understand who I am.  And then you’d need to spend almost four months in Lupeni, walking up and down the road to Straja every day, lifting that heavy wooden gate from its peg and stepping over the cow pies to enter my host family’s farm.  You’d need to read the Psalms and cry out to God in your loneliness and run up the mountain in the morning fog and listen to “Born” by Over the Rhine while you drive through the cloud-shrouded mountains of Transylvania.  You’d need to talk to the old woman outside the Pentecostal church and eat shaorma from the piaţa and smile at the security guard with the gray sweater in Penny.  You’d need to meet my beloved friends there, to be welcomed into their homes with such generous hospitality, to wrack your brain for ways to show love back.  You need to go.  You need to go walk the streets of Eastern European cities and villages, learn the region’s history, understand its pain, mourn its brokenness, celebrate its triumph, love its people, work for its healing.  I’m not there yet.  I want to be.  I want to be so badly.

Which is why I also can’t really answer that other recurrent question: “Is it good to be home?”  I suppose so.  It’s nice to be in Iowa for the holidays, for sure.  It’s nice to be surrounded by familiar traditions—it wouldn’t feel like Christmas otherwise, and I think it’s probably good to have that comfortable familiarity right now.  But honestly?  I’m not really at home, so I can’t say it’s good to be here.  I love being with my family, and there are some things that are really nice about being back in the States, but it no longer feels like home.  Not fully.  Calvin doesn’t either.  It’s a good thing that God has already told us that our home is nowhere on earth, or I’d be really lost and confused.  I am a bit anyway.  But I can deal with it, as long as I keep looking for the kingdom of heaven.  I hope.

I’ve made a lot of interesting observations about American culture since coming back.  (Well, they’re interesting to me anyway… haha).  Don De Graaf, the study abroad guru at Calvin, told me I should write them down.  I probably will, one of these days, but for now I’m just going to leave this post unedited, in all of its somewhat-grumpy confusion.  Welcome to the world of Kelly’s muddled mind.  I’m okay with the mess, though.  At least it’s honest.

And I choose to love, and I choose to seek God, even in the midst of it.  That’s all I can see to do… so I will.